The Continuing Fried Chicken Experiment

So here it is. The next round in our fried chicken experiment. As you might recall, we fried some chicken in the summer to take to the concerts in the park. And while it was pretty damn good, I thought we could work on it some more. Daphne, though being the more restrained of the two of us, said I wasn't allowed to fry more chicken the very next day. And that if I wanted to avoid becoming 300 pounds, I probably shouldn't even fry it the following week. So here we are several months later and frying chicken again. This time I got to use my big cast-iron chicken fryer that Daphne's grandmother bought for my birthday. It is huge and deep with a lid. Perfect for frying chicken. As last time, the chicken was soaked in buttermilk and Tabasco. Last time I used a whole bottle and I thought it needed more. This time I used half a Costco-sized bottle. About 175 mL of Tabasco. This time you could taste the Tabasco, but it still wasn't spicy. I think next time I'm going with the whole bottle.

This time we also experimented with the crust a little. Using the Cook's Illustrated as a guide we made a mixture of seasoned buttermilk, Tabasco, egg and a little baking soda to dip the chicken in between flourings. It made for a heavier coating than last time that I didn't mind, but Daphne just didn't like. She went so far as to peel the coating off and just eat the chicken. Fortunately we only did half the chicken with the new coating and the other half was done with just heavily seasoned flour like in the summer. It resulted in a much better coating that was crunchy and not so batter like. I think this might be the first time the Cook's Illustrated technique has let me down.

To have with the chicken, I made the oven fries from the Cook's Illustrated. I made them a couple of weeks ago with spectacular success. The two keys to the oven fries that I had not done in the past I think are a 10-minute soak in hot tap water and the first five minutes of baking are done on a pan covered tightly in aluminum foil. I don't know what the 10-minute soak in hot tap water does, but it is magical. It is something to do with the starches. Anyway, the results are fantastic. They were brilliant with the chicken. Anyway, it was a pretty indulgent dinner. So much fried chicken. Next time I think I'll use the whole bottle of Tabasco and maybe a slightly longer soaking time and we'll keep the flouring process simple. Just heavily seasoned flour.

Comments

[Ellen]

Have you tried frying in rice oil yet?? Cooks Illustrated gave it a great rating.